


The Devil's Cut/The Angel's Share

by racketghost



Series: Strange Moons [11]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Fingering, Aziraphale has stretch marks, Aziraphale is a flirty drunk, Blow Jobs, Gratuitous Smut, I just wanted to write about my hometown, Ineffable Idiots In History, Just Sex, M/M, Only Frances McDormand Can Judge Me, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Prohibition, Rimming, Song: Atlantic City - Bruce Springsteen, That's it, and we love them, consent is fucking sexy, literally no reason for anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:22:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: He has seen Aziraphale drunk before. Of course he has. Drunk on sacramental wine in Florence and drunk on honeyed mead in Wessex. Drunk in his bookshop-- more than a handful of times-- on good wine from France, but never drunk onhooch.He is not certain that Aziraphale knows what he is in for.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Strange Moons [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1480787
Comments: 183
Kudos: 804
Collections: The Strange Mooniverse





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdythangs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdythangs/gifts).



> In my tradition of being tacky and self-referential I would like to point out that while this can absolutely be read as a stand-alone story, it will be MUCH more meaningful if you read have read Strange Moons. Otherwise this is just the two of them randomly boning in the Prohibition Era with some random non-canonical history peppered in. But if you are into that sorta thing-- hey, you do you, baby.
> 
> I also cannot stress enough how absolutely absent plot is from any part of this.

Atlantic City, New Jersey

1923

This room has a heartbeat.

There is a saxophone wailing and gin flowing and the hazy glow of a hundred lit cigarettes coloring the basement air. There is the burn of electric stage lights, of good jazz, of moonshine so strong it has the tendency to strip the paint off the walls behind the bar. There are short skirts and shorter tempers, visible garter belts on human thighs of every color, of every size, the sting of salt-air breathing down the backstage steps every time someone opens the exterior door.

Crowley has never felt more at home.

He is in America of all places, the land of dreams that you could wish for but not acquire. This wild, untamed country full of greased palms and fresh immigrants, everyone desperate and thirsty for something— work, sex, housing that doesn’t flood when the tide comes in, religious freedom, escape from tyranny and escape from famine.

And they can’t get a fucking drink.

Not that you would know that from the look of this place— alcohol flowing like tribute from the myriad tapped barrels aging on the back wall— glass bottles stacked four deep from the top shelf to the floor. Prohibition has managed to shorten the skirts and lengthen the tolerances of every thirsty throat in Atlantic City.

If you had been a drunkard before Prohibition you were belligerently so during it.

Crowley swirls the clear liquid in his glass, stares down into it. It is gin, probably made in a bathtub beneath someone’s drying pantyhose, flavored with juniper berries and evergreen needles from the stretch of sandy forest the locals call _the pine barrens_.

They say a devil lives there— in that sandy forest. The thirteenth child of a woman who didn’t want it. They say he sprouted a tail and leather wings and took off up the chimney, still haunts the place today.

He _likes_ America, he’s decided. Likes the superstition that flows like currency between strangers here— don’t get married on a Friday, feeding seagulls is bad luck, walking over an unmarked grave will cause incurable foot cramps. Devils in the pine trees. Sin outside your door. Lady Luck carved on the barroom tables and palm readers pulling tarot cards like handles on a slot machine. Sin has been weaponized here, superstition too.

So it is with something of a shock that he sees across the dimly lit bar the familiar shape of his dearest friend, a literal angel, sipping primly at a drink.

There’s something that happens to him every time— every time he sees that blanched hair and that biscuit-colored coat, the shine of his color-shift eyes under incandescent light. It is something like being adrift at sea and then suddenly spotting land. Something like coming home again.

He is about to get up— about to stalk over to him and wrap that strikingly strong arm under his own and pull him up the backstairs— probably say something like _how dare you come here this is not a place for angels_ — probably get himself heated and in trouble, probably get Aziraphale upset.

So he steels his nerves, decides to treat Aziraphale like local fauna— observation only. Do not interfere.

Crowley swallows, takes another sip.

Aziraphale is prim, impossibly so, but still his foot is tapping under the bar to the keening of the saxophone, the brushing of a snare, alcohol being tipped down his throat.

He wants to get up and go to him. He wants to push that body against the woodgrain of the bar and get that gabardine coat sticky with dried drink—part that mouth and scrub the taste of pine needles off the back of his throat.

Crowley closes his eyes, presses a palm down against the rapidly hardening sex between his legs.

When he opens them, Aziraphale has moved— to a new spot on the bar, still standing, leaning over it and imploring the human behind it for another shot of something— “ _stronger_ ”— Crowley can make out the word on his lips even if he can’t hear it.

He grinds his molars together, flexes his jaw— because he knows the bartender personally, knows he makes his drinks tailored to those professional professionals who like their booze ironed stiff, 100 proof.

He has seen Aziraphale drunk before. Of course he has. Drunk on sacramental wine in Florence and drunk on honeyed mead in Wessex. Drunk in his bookshop, far more than a handful of times, on good wine from France, but never drunk on _hooch_.

He is not certain that Aziraphale knows what he is in for.

He is becoming decidedly more _wiggly_ , Crowley notices— wiggly in the shoulders and wiggly about the chest. His cheeks are flushing pink, even in the dim light, and it takes considerably more willpower than Crowley previously believed himself capable of to not stalk over to him and mount him on the bar like a trophy, suck the taste of moonshine off his lips.

But they haven’t kissed, _not yet_ , and it would be altogether wrong to do it here in this smelly sub-basement beneath a candy shop, with rows of saltwater taffy above them in their little glass prisons and seagulls nesting in the eaves, shitting on the sidewalk.

 _No_ — he should kiss Aziraphale someplace pure, someplace that doesn’t have that fecal ocean smell rising up through the basement floor, an unpalatable mix of over-proofed moonshine and bile, sharp and sweet. He should kiss Aziraphale someplace warm and bright and _safe_. Because if there is ever a place for demons to be lurking it is _here_ , ten miles from where a literal devil lives in a pine forest, in this place they call America’s Playground.

He closes his eyes, tries to get lost in the unpredictable rhythm of jazz solos— opens them, finds Aziraphale across the room, still leaning against the bar.

_Fuck._

Aziraphale is tonguing the rim of his glass.

If he did not know Aziraphale better he would assume that he is doing this on purpose— an exercise in temptation.

The angel is leaning back on his elbows, hips out, facing the musicians and drunkenly tonguing at the bit of citrus garnish left behind on his highball.

Crowley’s mouth is _dry_ and he curses, not for the first time, at the way this stuffy, ridiculous, posh little confection of an angel managed to crawl under his skin.

He watches those familiar cheeks grow increasingly pink, watches the stubborn chin as Aziraphale licks his lips, those eyes heavy and hooded as he watches the music, enthralled.

He isn’t sure if Aziraphale has ever even _heard_ jazz, and most likely not in person. He always figured it would be too unpredictable for so steady and slow-moving a creature as Aziraphale. Too frenetic. Too _free_.

But he is watching them mindfully, something like a smile on his face.

And then he is turning, asking for what Crowley can make out to be _‘another one’_ and he nearly breaks his rule, right then and there, to not interfere.

 _You are already fucking sloshed,_ he thinks, and then quickly forgets to care.

Forgets to care because Aziraphale is removing his coat— it is a bit stuffy in this basement, no outside air-flow— draping it neatly over a nearby chair. And then the angel is leaning forward on his elbows back onto the bar as he watches— his eyes alight in childlike wonder— at the barkeep mixing his drink.

Crowley tilts back his glass, tries to swallow it all. Anything to distract him from his dearest friend, his oldest acquaintance, the love of his _fucking existence_ leaning over a speakeasy bar and jutting out his backside into the smokey room.

There is the lovely dip of his lumbar, the upward sweep of soft shoulders, a supple neck, the easy jaw, an upturned nose. And then lower, the rounded belly, the full bottom, thick thighs that he knows are pale and soft and covered in gold-dust hair, silver marks along the inside where his thigh stretched but his skin didn’t. He wants to lathe his tongue over those marks like lightning, lay thanks against them for allowing his angel the space to eat another slice of cake, another crepe, more wine, _yes please_.

He has never come in his pants, but he supposes there is a first time for everything.

Crowley glances around, his heart hammering in his chest, wedges a hand into his trousers and pulls his cock up into his waistband, regrets his choice of pant. It feels good there— trapped up against his belly and his belt, and if he shifts his hips just slightly, back and forth, it feels even better.

 _I should probably say something_ , he thinks, watching Aziraphale roll his shoulders, take a long sip. _Pace yourself, angel_.

He feels it more than sees it when Aziraphale makes eye-contact with him. There is something about the holy blue of them here, even in the dark, even behind the smoke and the stage lights and the multitude of reflective surfaces that manages to see through his skin and into the place where he hopes he has a soul.

Crowley swallows, tries to compose himself.

He shouldn’t be this undone— this is _his_ scene, this is _his_ domain— he is a demon in an oceanside speakeasy in a city founded on sin. Aziraphale is the one who should be a fish out of water, here in this bar filled with cigarette smoke and refracted light, music pulsing, bodies pulsing, the floor feeling like the ocean is about to rise up through it any second now, suck this whole place out to sea.

 _And maybe it is_ , he thinks, as Aziraphale walks over. Maybe it is because the room suddenly feels liquid and deep, like he is about to drown.

There is the coy dip of that pale head, the upward glance of his watercolor eyes, and then Aziraphale is standing next to him, brushing a hand up the collar of his jacket.

“At what point were you going to say hi to me?”

His mouth is amazingly, fantastically dry and he curses the existence of dry gin and his affinity for it.

“Didn’t want to make it too obvious,” he says, swallowing, “sleight of hand, remember?”

“Mmm,” Aziraphale makes an agreeable noise in his throat and then trails those fingers up to his ear, loops them around the arm of his glasses.

Crowley is trying not to think about the angel bending down, about those lips so close to his ear, about whether or not he can see the cock wedged up into his waistband.

“I know _you_ can see in the dark, dear boy,” Aziraphale is saying, and those words are like a rainstorm in a desert— slaking down his neck until he is wet with want— “but no one else can,” he finishes, and then slowly removes his glasses.

 _Don’t kiss him, don’t kiss him, not yet_.

But he wants to— _so_ badly, perhaps more than he has wanted anything, even sex. Just to know what that bottom lip would feel like pressed to his, what those even white teeth taste like along his tongue.

“Angel,” he whispers, nearly an admonishment— and never in a million years would he have guessed that _he’d_ be the careful one.

But Aziraphale isn’t listening, he is leaning his hip into the dented wooden table and fingering at the shell of Crowley’s ear, biting his lip.

“Did you do this?” He is asking, and Crowley has to dip his head away from that hand to hear it.

“What?”

“Prohibition.”

“What? _No_.”

“Did you take credit for it?”

Crowley pins him with what he hopes is an unamused glare.

“What do you think?” He asks.

“I think you did,” Aziraphale says, running his tongue along his top teeth.

Crowley shifts his hips, back, forth— silently regretting pinning his cock in such a pleasurable location.

“You think so little of me?” Crowley retorts.

“No,” Aziraphale says, and it is practically a hiccup, “I think of you _a lot_.”

The hairs on the back of Crowley’s neck stand on end— and then there is that strange feeling of being encased in liquid again, like reality isn’t quite _real_.

 _He’s drunk_ , he reminds himself, _and you aren’t drunk enough_.

“ _Angel_ ,” he whispers, and can feel the flush walking up his neck, “I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

“I think I have had exactly _enough_ to drink,” he says, and then slides into Crowley’s lap.

“ _Fuck_ , Jesus Christ, _angel_.”

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“You need to sober up,” he says, and glances wildly around the room, ready for Hastur, or Ligur, or Gabriel, or _Michael_ to come storming through some door any minute now, haul Aziraphale away.

“If I sober up,” Aziraphale is asking, tracing fingers along Crowley’s throat, over his Adam’s apple, up the long tendons to his jaw, “will you take me somewhere?”

Crowley looks down at him sharply, “ _somewhere?_ ”

He turns those eyes on him— gray and green and gold all at once, blue around the edges— “somewhere we can be alone,” he says, and is looking at Crowley’s mouth.

“Okay,” he breathes, because he knows once Aziraphale sobers up that it will be over— that he will realize how completely and utterly besotted he is being and can practically hear the angel rattling off something about decorum and the terrible qualities this backwater hooch impresses upon unsuspecting people.

“Okay,” Aziraphale mirrors back, and then the angel is squeezing his eyes closed, furrowing his brow— and Crowley watches as the glass behind him fills slowly with the same clear liquid he’d been drinking at the bar.

“Better?” He asks, not wanting the angel to move despite his sudden sobriety.

Aziraphale is tonguing the roof of his mouth at what Crowley knows is the odd sensation of alcohol pulling back through it.

“Better,” he breathes, and to Crowley’s astonishment, _doesn’t move_.

“Angel,” he says, trying not to grab Aziraphale’s waist and thrust mindlessly up against him, “this is dangerous,” he reminds him.

“I’m sober,” he says in response, his eyes glittering dangerously in the bar light, “you promised.”

Crowley swallows against the lump in his throat, the dryness in his mouth.

“Are you sure?” He asks.

And then Aziraphale is leaning in close, whispering in his ear, “why don’t you teach me how they make this swill?”

Crowley is nodding up at him before he realizes it, before he can stop it.

“Sure,” he can hear himself saying, “let me teach you.”

* * *

There is a backroom to this place, somewhere behind the bar. He knows it because he has _been there,_ rolling bourbon barrels off of trucks in the middle of the night, ferrying in apple crates filled with everything but apples.

They are there, at the door, and then inside of it— before Crowley even knows what he’s doing, how dangerous this is— they are in a strange city in a strange country and he can’t get the door locked fast enough behind them.

“You _did_ have something to do with this,” Aziraphale is saying, “didn’t you?” As he swings around and takes a look at this cellar with the earthen floor and the wall stacked with wooden barrels.

“I may have,” he says, off-handed, “the other side of it though. Who the hell outlaws alcohol anyway?”

“Not my lot,” Aziraphale says, with too much belief for someone so wrong. “What are these?” He asks, brushing fingers along a barrel.

“Bourbon barrels. It’s hard to come by— takes too long to age.”

Aziraphale quirks an eyebrow at him, throwing a silent question.

“I may also be shielding this from prying eyes, yes” he admits, “it seems I’ve developed a fondness for the stuff.”

He is staring at Aziraphale there across this small room, remembering a time in that closet that they called his military quarters in France— Fort Vaux— that shared bit of very good bourbon some American soldier had left behind.

It all feels like centuries ago, like lifetimes.

And it is maybe, he thinks— thinking of all the times he should have died were he mortal, all the times Aziraphale revived him, patched him up, carried him home.

He stalks toward him, breathes down into the space that is humming with electricity between them.

It is strung tight, like the electrons have run out of room and are generating friction between them— static arcing through the air.

“Tell me about it,” Aziraphale is saying, “ _teach me_.”

He has never seen Aziraphale like this— this insistent, this open. He has a fleeting suspicion that perhaps he didn’t sober up completely, because his breath still smells like that pine forest, like a devil might live there.

Crowley bites off the moan in his throat, threads his hand up the side of Aziraphale’s body.

“These are charred white oak,” he says, and hesitates, not wanting to press Aziraphale into the bit of soot on the exterior of the barrel.

But Aziraphale does it for him, somehow catching his hesitation, leaning into those scorch marks and looking up at him dreamily.

“They have to fire them until they’re black,” he continues, “completely burnt inside.”

There is a touch of something like anger in his eyes— and Crowley likes it, _loves_ him for it— that the angel never feels sorry for him.

Because anger he can stomach, but pity he cannot bear.

And he can’t handle it— how much he loves every bit of this being that is engineered to be his enemy, his opposite. How much he loves the very defiant act that loving Aziraphale even is-- even if the angel doesn’t love him back, or loves him on account of some innate divine trait to love everything, always— even _him_ , a demon. 

It’s enough, Crowley decides, that Aziraphale leans into those scorch marks.

“They’re quite beautiful things,” Aziraphale is saying, but he is looking at Crowley’s eyes.

It’s too much, it’s too much— and before he can even think to stop it he is pushing that plush body up against the casks, rolling their hips together, gasping against his jaw. He presses a chaste kiss beneath his ear, ruts up against him like an animal.

And he still carries it— carries it always— that bit of doubt that all of this is temptation, that he has dragged Aziraphale into some valley of sin and is incapable of walking backwards out of it.

 _Lead me not into temptation_ , he thinks— and then wildly, _but it was you leading me this time._

“You know what they call the alcohol absorbed by the barrels?” He can hear himself saying, staring at the bourbon casks behind Aziraphale’s head.

The angel is moaning, _gasping_ , throwing his head back and rolling against the pressure of Crowley’s hipbones grinding him against the wood grain.

“ _No,_ ” he gasps out, fisting his hand in Crowley’s shirt.

“They call it the Devil’s Cut,” he says, and then sinks to his knees.

He is pushing those pants off, _off_ — down to his knees and then the underwear too, and then there is the soft smell of the angel’s skin rising up— all golden heat and heady sunshine, warm and male and pure and _perfect_.

There are white-gold curls of hair at the base of him, damp with sweat, and Crowley buries his nose into them, inhales the concentrated elixir of his scent there, strokes a hand up the hard length. The skin of his cock iswarm and velvet and _pink_ , even in this light— _everywhere_ — pale blue veins like marble threading through him.

He opens his mouth around that pink length, sucks kisses up the side— and he is faintly aware of the angel grasping at the barrels he is leaning against, his legs already trembling.

“ _Crowley_ ,” he is gasping, quiet, “oh darling, _please_.”

“What do you want?” He asks against that skin like silk pulled tight over steel.

“ _You_ ,” he moans, threading a hand through Crowley’s hair, “you, _please_.”

For all the angel could be a bit of a bastard, Crowley thinks, he also has _impeccable_ manners _._

“You have me,” Crowley sucks the tip of him into his mouth, pulls him out, rubs the wetness against his cheek, “be specific.”

Aziraphale looks down at him with hooded eyes, his mouth parted, lips wet. He is flushed and panting— ceaselessly lovely.

“The desert, that one time.”

Crowley can barely hear his voice over the din next door, the staccato rhythm of bodies and brass instruments.

“ _Which_ time?” He asks, and then has to smile because never in his wildest fucking dreams would he ever have imagined that he would be privileged enough to ask such a question.

_Which time in which desert doing which sexual act do you wish to replicate? Pick from the menu, angel, you can order whatever you want._

“Meggido,” he says, and Crowley doesn’t miss the way his eyes darken, the sudden stab of something in the room that smells a lot like fear.

Crowley is still on his knees and they are aching, _aching_ — some failure of his increasingly human form, of a snake skeleton reconfigured to have leg bones.

“Anything you want,” he breathes, and stares up into his eyes.

_You have me, I hope you know._

And then he grabs those generous hips in his hands, digs his fingers into the excess, has to bite his tongue against his moan.

 _No,_ he thinks, _not excess_ — because excess implies _too much_ , excess implies _waste_ — and there is _nothing_ wasted on Aziraphale, nothing _too much_ about him. He is plenty, yes, and also a _wealth_ , an affluence.

Crowley rubs his face into that belly, kisses at the line of hair there. And then he turns those hips until he is facing the wall of bourbon casks, pulls them out toward him until that back is flat and his arms are braced on the barrels underneath of him.

He kisses up the thighs and up those silver marks, lays thanks against them with his tongue. And then pushes apart the wealth of skin and softness on that lovely round bottom, digs his mouth in for more.

There’s a noise of shock— like Aziraphale had forgotten what this was like— and then a sudden arching of his back, desperate hands grabbing at the barrel underneath of him.

“ _Crowley_ , oh dearest, oh darling—“

He is panting, _panting_ , and Crowley’s head swims with the ecstasy of it all— ignoring his screaming knees and his deserted sex— tonguing against that wrinkled skin, sucking on it, pushing inside.

He tastes warm and thick— if _thick_ could be a taste— and it’s almost too much— Aziraphale’s noises and his cock still trapped up in his waistband, rubbing against his belly. He’s so close, so tightly strung, about to come all over his pants without even touching himself, without even meaning too— because he has Aziraphale bent over a barrel in the backroom of an illicit bar, tonguing at the deepest part of him, absorbing all his sounds.

The angel is _soaked_ — slick— with sweat and saliva and Crowley is vaguely glad that Aziraphale can’t see what a messy eater he is, his appalling lack of table manners.

The angel is vibrating underneath of him, trembling into those hard wooden barrels and Crowley has a sharp slice of something like regret— for doing this in a backroom, up against unforgiving wood grain and an earthen floor. Aziraphale deserves silk sheets and velvet, deserves featherbeds and pillows.

He pulls back, just enough to see Aziraphale pressing his forehead against a cask, ask him, “is this good? Is this okay?”

“ _Yes_. Keep going? Unless— oh, are you—?” he starts to straighten up, but then Crowley smoothes a hand down against his spine.

“Can I do this?” He asks, quiet, uncertain— two fingers moving into the space his mouth had been, pressing gently.

“ _Oh,_ ” Aziraphale is breathing heavily and there is a moment of hesitation, Crowley biting his lip, cursing his need to always push and push and push for more, always— never satisfied.

_Fuck, I’m sorry. It’s too much, isn’t it?_

He opens his mouth, gets half of an aborted, “ _It’s okay if you—“_

And then Aziraphale is pressing back against him, that bottom lip pulled between perfectly even teeth.

“ _Yes_. But, uhm, perhaps just one?”

There is some sort of broken sound in the room— coming out of Crowley’s throat— and he presses his forehead into the soft pillow of Aziraphale’s hip, sucks a grateful kiss against his skin.

He sticks his index finger in his mouth, wets it, presses it back against Aziraphale’s entrance.

There’s heat there, and slickness— the slightest bit of resistance and then he’s inside. And he’s amazed, _thrilled_ even— at how the angel’s muscles hold his finger, pull him in.

“Is this okay?” He can hear himself asking.

“Oh, _yes_ , very okay,” is Aziraphale’s reply, somewhere in front of him, bouncing off the walls. All he can hear is the rush of his own blood in his ears, the sound of Aziraphale’s breathing, the slick noises of his finger against the angel’s skin.

He twists his finger a bit, moves it out, moves it in— Aziraphale moving too, onto him, off of him. Crowley’s head swims thinking about what it might feel like for his cock to be there instead— the warmth, the suction, the pressure. There’s a knot of something there— in the softness, in the heat— and he presses on it, just a bit—

“Oh God, _fuck_ , Crowley, _Crowley_.”

Crowley bites his lip so hard he is sure that it is bleeding— but he isn’t going to say anything, not this time, at the angel’s profanity. He presses a surprised and proud kiss into that white bottom instead, lays his cheek there.

“That’s it, angel,” he is murmuring softly, “that’s good,” and then rubs against that spot.

Aziraphale is _wailing_ , something like a sob coming out of his mouth and then there are knuckles there, Crowley can see, biting down. He reaches his other hand up, between his legs, to wrap around his length there— wet and raw and leaking.

“Crowley, oh, oh fuck, _Crowley_ —“

And then there is a sudden incredible suction, the angel’s muscles gripping his finger hard enough to make the knuckle hurt— a wordless cry as he spills all over the floor, all over the barrel he is leaning on, Crowley very nearly following after him.

Aziraphale is panting down into his arms, into the barrel— and then he is straightening, pulling himself away from Crowley’s hand and turning around to face him.

He looks… unwound, _frayed_ — delightfully so. His hair is mussed, the white curls no longer holding their shape, fluffed into unstructured clouds. He licks his lips, reaches down to grab Crowley somewhere under the arms.

“That,” he is saying, still out of breath, straightening his trousers, “was better than the time in the desert.”

Crowley almost laughs, chewing on his lip as the angel wedges him up onto that barrel— like he weighs nothing— Aziraphale sinking to his knees— and then nearly comes as the angel’s hand begins pulling at his belt.

“Do you know,” Aziraphale starts, every movement of his fingers transferred to Crowley’s cock like tiny shockwaves, captured there in his waistband, “what they call the alcohol that evaporates during aging?”

Crowley is beyond himself, beyond words, ready to spill if Aziraphale so much as _breathes_ on him.

He is shaking his head, “ _no_ ,” he gasps, wired tight.

There is the slow pull of a zipper, the careful delicate touch of a hand undoing his button, his cock bobbing there without the belt holding it upright.

Crowley chances a glance down— at the angel on his knees in the backroom of a smokey speakeasy in Atlantic City, on that floor smelling like seaweed and spilled ejaculate— decides that he has never seen something more lovely.

“They call it _The Angel’s Share_.”

And then he sucks him into his mouth, and Crowley comes.

It’s instant— instantaneous— and if he had any presence of mind he might have been embarrassed— but not here, not with Aziraphale drinking him down so eagerly and those hands cradling his thighs, not with Aziraphale having seen him at his worst, having held him through bullet-holes and panic-attacks, through fevers and war.

It arcs through him like an electric current, and he is probably being too loud and definitely not caring, eyes slamming up closed, hips rolling up into that supplicant mouth, Aziraphale swallowing well past his finish.

It keeps going— stretches out— and then finally he can breathe again, can hear again, is somewhat shocked to find life still existing in that room just beyond them, unperturbed. 

“Jesus fucking Christ _,”_ he is breathing, shoving a hand against his face, into his hair, pushing it back off his eyes, “thank you. _Fuck_ , thank you.”

Aziraphale looks up at him from the floor, his eyes wet and glimmering with all the mysterious secrets of angels and sex, licks his lips, his cheeks flushed.

“Anytime,” he says, and Crowley can hear his own words from long ago— on a bathroom floor perhaps, honeycomb tile underfoot— echoing back at him, “I mean it,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley can see the smile in his eyes, emphatic, “ _anytime_.”


	2. The Diving Horse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [Drawlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drawlight/pseuds/drawlight)'s advent calendar writing challenge.

If you stand at the edge of the continent and close your eyes, it sounds like the ocean is breathing.

_And maybe it is_ , Aziraphale thinks, standing there at the edge of the Atlantic, his eyes closed. He listens to the inhale, to the exhale— imagines the ocean like a great beating heart. An open circulatory system. Giant blue lungs.

 _And maybe they are_ , he muses, thinking that the water on the earth’s surface is a lot like the blood in human veins— carrying the promise of life with its sometimes furious and fickle squalling, carrying movement in its tides too.

And he knows at this moment that their tide is flowing out again— for who knows how long this time— until it flows back in once more and fills the tide pools, allows them to breathe.

“How is it?” Crowley is asking, watching Aziraphale from the corner of his eye.

“ _Sticky_ ,” he says, and eats it anyway, “delightfully so.”

He isn’t quite sure why they call it _salt-water_ taffy, for all the stuff is not salty at all.

“Would you like a piece?” He begins unwrapping one from its waxed paper label.

“Not at all,” Crowley says, “I’d rather you have them.”

They are not going to talk about how Crowley broke into _Fralinger’s Candy Shoppe_ drunk on bathtub gin in those small morning hours and filled a paper bag with every color of the rainbow in taffy— plus a few spare pink ones that claimed to be peach flavored but were very obviously pear. They are not going to talk about Aziraphale leaving an inappropriate amount of incorrect paper currency in the till in recompense either.

“It’s colder here than I thought it would be,” Aziraphale says, rubbing his hands up and down his arms.

“Because of the postcards?”

“I suppose.”

Always humans in their near-nudity, bathing in the sea. The postcards all paint this place as bereft of time, suspended summer.

But here and now the ocean is gray and turbulent, the sky is _white_ —all of it, even the deep horizon—and there are no half-nude bathers, no push-carts on the boardwalk.

There is, in fact, _no one_ on the boardwalk. Too early, perhaps, or too _late_ , depending on how you look at it. The sun is just beginning to break along that stretch of cresting waves, paint the white-caps gold. There are seagulls still nesting in the eaves of the carousel behind them, dolphins just surfacing for their first sip of morning air.

They are also not going to talk about how they stumbled half-drunk on love and gin and jazz up those back-steps, how they very nearly kissed a dozen times against the sticky basement walls— and then again in the alley behind the speakeasy, again against that carousel before the sun had risen— very nearly. Not quite. Not _yet_.

The sun is _blinding_ as it cuts through the cloud cover, skips along the ocean. Aziraphale squints into it, willing the time to not pass. Stay here. Stop moving. _Don’t breathe_.

The air here tastes different, he thinks, like cold and creosote and _salt_. Like dreams might come true here, nightmares too.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, looking suddenly up at that blinding white sky, “it’s _snowing_.”

Crowley follows his eyes up, to the white sky and the white flakes like ash drifting down to them, looks decidedly displeased.

“What,” Aziraphale asks, turning to look at him, “you don’t like the snow?”

“It’s rain but solid. Of course I don’t like it.”

“Cold, too,” Aziraphale reminds him, thinking of that time in a tent, in a certain hill in a certain country. It’s a story they have told together before, maybe more than once. Maybe in more than one lifetime.

Crowley makes a nondescript noise in his throat, turns to look at Aziraphale.

He is squinting, _squinting_ at Crowley because the sun is somehow more intense after its long nap, somehow more intense bouncing off the metallic bits of the carousel and the reflective bits of the water, more intense refracting the brilliance of Crowley’s hair— molten copper, melted gold. Mirrors all around.

“Don’t remind me,” Crowley mutters, and then pauses. He is tonguing his incisors, staring at Aziraphale strangely. And then he is reaching up, some stilted remembered movement, and pulling off his glasses, handing them over.

“Don’t hurt your eyes,” he says, as if in explanation.

Aziraphale looks at them hanging there, his heart taking residence in his throat. And then he is shrugging out of his jacket, perching it on Crowley’s clothes-hanger shoulders.

He takes the glasses, puts them on, stares out at the ocean.

“Don’t catch a cold,” he says, as if in explanation.

There is a shocked stillness next to him, a petrified silence. And then he is being tugged into a familiar chest, up against that furious heart.

“We could go somewhere,” Crowley is saying, something desperate in his voice, something broken, “get a hotel. The _Claridge_ is nice.”

He is in his arms and they are standing on that pier and there is sunlight kissing their faces, washing onto their clothes.

“When are you due back?” Crowley is speaking somewhere into the top of his head.

He doesn’t want to say it. He wants to stand here on this edge of Crowley’s desperation and wash in and out with the tides, beholden of nothing.

“Soon,” he can hear himself saying, and closes his eyes.

There is something that sounds like a _no_ from Crowley’s throat, although no sound comes out of his mouth. Those hands at his back pull at him a little closer, the heart across from his beats a little louder.

He can smell his own cologne on his own jacket that Crowley is wearing, can smell the sharpness of Crowley underneath. He hopes the scent takes residence there, moves in next to his.

“I have so much I want to show you,” Crowley is whispering, almost too quiet to hear.

“There’s a giant elephant you can stay inside. Right on the beach. They call her _Lucy_.”

Aziraphale can’t smile, not quite, because he has never felt unraveled like this, has never felt someone pull desperate threads like entreating veins out of their own arms, open them up, bleed all over.

“And a diving horse. She jumps from high up into a pit of water with a woman on her back,” he laughs but there is no humor in it, “it’s terrible.”

“That sounds dreadful,” Aziraphale manages, maneuvering words around that inexplicable lump in his throat.

“I know,” Crowley says, so softly he can barely hear it.

“I can’t stay,” he whispers.

There is a deep pause where the ocean is the only sound— a familiar respiration, the tide pulling out.

“I know,” he says, “I know.”

They will not talk about this the next time they see each other, whether that time comes in stretches of months or weeks or years. They will not talk about how Crowley kept Aziraphale’s jacket that winter, returned it in the spring by mail. They will not talk about the pair of glasses that Aziraphale keeps in his bookshop till, next to that torn bit of address that holds Crowley’s house number. They will keep breathing in and out with the tides, move with those invisible currents— snow on the ocean waves. Beholden of everything.

And they will pull apart, Aziraphale knows, eventually. They will pull apart when the snow slicks the warped boardwalk beneath their feet and the tide has gone down near empty, revealed the horseshoe crabs, the oyster shells. They will pull apart like the moon drifting from perigee to apogee, nearly kissing. Not quite. _Not yet_.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, come yell at me about absolutely anything on [Tumblr!](https://racketghost.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [Liquid_Lyrium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/pseuds/Liquid_Lyrium) Log in to view. 




End file.
